All Talk & No Action makes Joy a very unhappy cookie

When faced with "can't live with it, makes me want to shoot myself in the head" shit in your life, at what point is giving up the appropriate path to take? Normally, I am persistent, resilient, and typically able to obtain/achieve the desired outcome of _________ in my life. Furthermore, I feel that I believe the best in people and always try to "make room", give them the benefit of the doubt; I focus on the positive and treat people how I hope to be treated. I believe in being good to people, especially the people in my life that I value.

I also believe that we are all human, therefore we all have the capacity to make mistakes. I'm fine with that. What I'm not fine with is when someone makes mistakes, apologizes, then continues to repeat these mistakes over and over, wash, rinse, and repeat this dirty little dysfunctional cycle.

There comes a time when, enough is enough. You have to stop kidding yourself and start facing the reality of things. I was, and still am, a firm believer in the idea that you can do ANYTHING, no matter how challenging the task -- but you have to do it 200%, full heart & soul, blood and guts, balls to the walls, hoo-rah to the max.

Bottom line is that you do it. Why? Because you value that thing, whatever that thing or person or goal is. Because it is that important to you to have it in your life. Because you want to show that thing, that person, that goal, that it means that much to them that you can do what you say and say what you do. To demonstrate that yes, you can make a mistake but you can make amends not by your words, but by doing better in that area through your actions, not by bullshit apologies.

Am I just a ball buster or am I correct to assume that it's not too much to ask! It is true, you cannot change people, they have to change themselves using their own will. So what do you do? Remain a victim of circumstance and just accept things as they are?

No. Hell no. Like I said, you can't change people, you can't change circumstance. But if you remove yourself from those people, from those circumstances, then you are changing yourself--the one true thing you have full control over. Yes, it can be painful, it can be frustrating, it can be tragic. It is.

But what's more tragic is just participating in the de ja dysfunction-vu and allowing yourself to re-live and remind yourself how some things, no matter how much you love them and hope that you can repair, just can't be done. It's out of your control and that's something that you just have to come to terms with.

No wishing on a star, caviar dreams, or Harry Potter magic will come along and suddenly make things better, even if, deep down inside you wish there was such a solution.

If you sit and hope to make things better, it just gets worse. You realize that you don't even know this person, thing, or goal anymore - you realize you don't really know what's real vs. fake, truth vs. lies, because if you really stop to think about it, you've been given a little bit of both. So how the fuck are you supposed to distinguish one from the other?

Sometimes, you just have to do what is right. You owe at least that, to yourself. Yes, you will lose something you have worked so hard and invested so much time into. But would you rather continue to lose more, little by little, the longer you just sit and wait and hope for a miracle?

Your heart will always tell you no, and your head will always contradict that. Somewhere between these points, you just have to know when to say when. There are some things in life that will fail you, that's just life.

The best thing you can do is not fail yourself, pick yourself up, dust off, and over time, realize that you did the best thing you could possibly do - sometimes it's better to let go than to give in. You gotta know when to hold - and when to fold. Life is a gamble.

Admittedly, I have learned this the long, hard way with one thing in particular; the only aspect that I cannot excel in (cause you can't do this one alone!), for the life, blood, and guts in me. And I'm hoping that by you reading this, if you are going through something similar in your life, that you come to the realization that I have and that you do what you know you should have done long ago. Do yourself a favor-don't expect anyone to do that for you.